Sections

Dec 5 Time’s “Person of the Year” is now “#1 Anti-Trumper”

Time magazine recently released its full list of the 33 people that are in consideration for the well-known title of “Person of the Year” for 2017. And from one glance up and down the list, it’s clear that up to a third of the line-up might as well be in the running for “#1 Anti-Trumper” 2017.

Yes, the list has many worthy names on it, including political power players and world leaders who are indeed shaping the world today: President Trump, Vladimir Putin, Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, Pope Francis, Xi Jinping, and Steve Bannon in particular.

But there is an undeniably large portion of the list that is devoted solely to the year’s most prominent anti-Trump “activists,” from washed-up celebrities, to athletes, to self-righteous politicians.

What about on the political scene? Hillary Clinton, who can’t take the hint and just go away after such an embarrassing and historic loss. Disgraced former FBI Director James Comey, who admitted to deliberately leaking memos in order to trigger a special counsel against Trump. The trio of traitorous “Republican” Senators who embarrassed the party and betrayed the nation by voting to save Obamacare at the 11th hour: Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and John McCain. Maxine Waters, who has become the latest figurehead for laughable efforts to impeach the President for the crime of being a Republican. Carmen Yulin Cruz, who blatantly lied about the amount of aid received in Puerto Rico - and even deliberately hindered relief efforts - just to try to make Trump look bad. The collective title of “The Dreamers,” in reference to the illegal aliens who almost earned amnesty under DACA and now face deportation. And, of course, what anti-Trump list would be complete without Robert Mueller?

Even the list of usual world leaders undoubtedly comes with its very own anti-Trump connotations: Particularly French president Emmanuel Macron, German chancellor Angela Merkel, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, and of course, Rocket Man.

As I said before, there are undoubtedly some worthy names on the list that are more innocuous in comparison to the plethora of shrieking “resistance” members: Athlete Serena Williams, singer Taylor Swift, and “Wonder Woman” director Patty Jenkins, for example. The rise of awareness of sexual harassment in powerful industries also has recognition that I think is actually warranted: Susan Fowler, who blew the whistle on widespread sexual misconduct within the ride-sharing company Uber, as well as the collective title of the “#MeToo” hashtag that has successfully all but burned Hollywood to the ground (a welcome development, in my humble opinion).

Surprisingly enough, the poll results have actually produced a rather deserving result, at the time of writing this. Even though the poll admittedly has little to no effect on who is chosen, it is still telling that even the Time readership and everyone else taking part in the poll has made this choice: Running away with #1 - at a whopping 22% - is the Saudi prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has been spearheading an internal purge of corrupt government officials and royal family members. Everyone else is far behind, congregating around 3%, 4%, 5%, and 6% or so.

Most importantly, I actually do not think any one of the major anti-Trumpers will ultimately win the position, and most won’t even end up on the list. Ever since November 9th of 2016, the anti-Trump pie has been so hastily sliced up into smaller and smaller pieces that no single individual can truly claim the anti-Trump mantle, from some lowly ESPN commentator to the Democratic nominee he defeated. Even in the small battleground of the Senate, the tiny contingent of anti-Trumpers who have thwarted some of the Republican Party’s key agenda items is too evenly divided between the three aforementioned Senators. If I had to take a wild stab at whom I think will emerge on top of that anti-Trump crowd though, I’d definitely put money on Mueller (for obvious reasons).

I personally believe that the list will ultimately be dominated by the world leaders, since that can be passed off as legitimate leadership in “these troubled times” while also serving as a not-so-subtle veil for the anti-Trump tendencies among some of them. I’ll also expect Bezos to be on the list due to his widespread influence with both the Washington Post and Amazon (Zuckerberg already had his day in last year’s list, as did Taylor Swift in 2014), as well as Mueller and both of the collective titles of the Dreamers and #MeToo (with the latter far outranking the former).

If I had to predict a rough estimation of the list, I’d say it will probably go something like this (assuming that there are 10 runner-ups on the list, in addition to #1, as there were in 2016):